National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie

immediately. There may be a question of investing in the relationship, whereby
the underlying idea is that something will be required in return at some point in
the future. Such a consideration is difficult to prove because the people involved
remain silent and no administrative traces of the transaction were left, for
example. A large number of the investigations concerning corruption (Section
363 of the Penal Code) end up as ‘breach of official secrecy’ (Section 272 of the
Penal Code). Various respondents stated that this is based on deliberately chosen
tactics: priority is assigned to removing the bad apple from the bunch. As a
result, actually proving and punishing corruption has to take second place.
Customs and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee
The crossing of national borders is monitored by Customs and the Royal
Netherlands Marechaussee (KMar). Employees of these supervisory organisations
sometimes aid and abet criminal organisations in return for payment. These
employees end up doing so for the same reasons as some police officers help
criminal organisations; in that respect their position is not different.
The main logistics hubs are Schiphol Airport and the port of Rotterdam. Various
leading publications have concluded that corruption of public servants hardly
occurs in ports 62 . The indications are different with regard to Schiphol. KMar and
Customs employees are quite regularly arrested for aiding and abetting various
forms of organised crime. This mainly involves human trafficking, smuggling
of illegal immigrants and drug smuggling.
According to the respondents, Schiphol Airport provides a lot of opportunities
for corruption of public servants. The impression is that these are mainly ‘minor’
contacts, who allow something through or provide information about a
particular flight, for example. One KMar respondent expressed doubts about
whether corruption occurs on a large scale. According to one Customs
respondent, there are only a few cases per year among Customs officials.
Nevertheless, there have also been larger cases recently in which supervisory
officials were involved.
One notable aspect of the corruption of public servants is that most cases
involve officials in the field and not managerial officials who occupy strategic
positions. This is because of the transit nature of crime in the Netherlands. Help
from public servants and from supervisory officials in the field is often sufficient
for transit activities. It is not necessary to develop positions of power. Criminal
organisations prefer not to run more risks than necessary.
62
However, corruption does occur among the employees of businesses in the ports,
but that subject will be discussed in the following subsection (5.2.3).
chapter 5 – Criminal modus operandi
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